To win a copy of the Penny Arcade game, grab a Penny Arcade comic and remix it. Replace the word balloons, mix and match panels from different comics; whatever you like. Send the result as an attachment to willeth -at- gmail -dot- com with the subject PRECIPICE CONTEST. You won't be judged on the image quality, so feel free to use Paint if you want, but make it good. The final date for entry to this contest is Thursday October 2nd at noon GMT.

To win entry into the LittleBigPlanet beta, fire an email to willeth -at- gmail -dot- com with your SackBoy design and the subject LBP CONTEST. You can find Media Molecule's template here or you can create your own. Entry for this contest closes on Thursday October 2nd at noon GMT.

Multiwinia, PC - £12.83 on Steam, or £15 direct from Introversion (with various other options too), or a boxed retail copy for £15.99 from the 3rd of October.

Review by LewieP

Multiwinia is a damn pretty game.

That's probably the first thing you'll notice about it. Introversion have a real flair for visual design, and Multiwinia is no different. I described it as "TRON: Total War" in the podcast, and I think that's a pretty fair assessment. The digital skies and vector mountains are really stunning to behold, and you can zoom right in, or pan right out to see whatever detail or scale you want. The humble system requirements mean that pretty any PC will be able to play it (2.0GHz/512MB RAM/GeForce 6200 or Radeon 9600), and the Mac and Linux versions are on the way shortly. It runs great on my PC, with a really solid framerate.

In an industry where the overwhelming trend in games it to strive for a gritty, realistic, aesthetic, Multiwinia serves as both a breath of fresh air, and a reminder that whatever tech games may have under the bonnet, good art direction will always trump megaflops and bump mapping.

That's not to say Multiwinia is just a pretty face, it's as clever as it is beautiful.

I'm not even going to attempt to place it within the boundaries of a genre. It has elements of an RTS, to be sure, but it disregards as many of the conventions of the genre as it follows. Essentially, you have a bunch of guys and you have to battle over resources, territory and control points.

There are various gametypes, each with different objectives and conditions for victory, but it always boils down to testing your micromanagement skills, strategic skills, observation and spacial awareness. When all of your spawn points are in order, suddenly your opponent will get a power up that tips things in their favour. Once you've dealt with that, a power up crate will land near one of your guys. Once you've got that, you'll loose a spawn point, and so on. There is a fantastic flow to the games. They are not so fast paced that it's hard to keep up, but there is always just a little bit more going on that you can ever completely keep up with. There is never time to sit back and watch the battle unfold. The matches are always time limited, and more often than not an early lead can be very quickly eroded.

The power-ups are pretty crazy, some of them border on being over-powered, and the right one at the right time can really sway a battle. They tap into similar feeling as the equivalent mechanic in the worms games, and are just as inventive as the weapons and power-ups in worms. Planting an ant's nest near your opponents spawn point never gets old, and the nuclear launch is appropriately epic.

The various gun turrets feel fantastic, you can leave the to be automated, or for precision aiming, you can take direct control of them. You get a fantastic sense of the scale of the battles from this position, and can take out specific targets (although you have to be careful of friendly fire).

It's billed as a straight up multiplayer game, but about a third of the time I've spent with it has been offline, and even against bots it is engaging.

Multiwinia is to 'serious' RTS games what Smash Brothers is to Virtua Fighter. There are definitely big elements of chance in there, and it is certainly less technical than it's peers, but it is often a hell of a lot more fun.

Multiwinia is tight, fluid and really does march to it's own beat. There is a lot to love here, every match is different, and it's an experience you will not find anywhere else.

It's Episode 6 of the SavyGamer Podcast, on the web and in your ears! This week we interview Dorian Kieken of BioWare on designing a Sonic RPG and the future of BioWare games on DS. We're now listed on iTunes, too!

Show notes (Highlight to view):00:00 Pre-show00:10 Opening00:47 Welcome01:07 I don't actually have a pinky finger.01:21 More contests!05:03 Halo Mythic13:15 Vidmaster challenge - help me![NOTE - I've actually completed this now, thanks to those that helped!]14:46 End of Halo talk! Live's going down on Monday.15:25 Is the NXE due in November?17:20 CheapAssGamer Xbox Pure rumour (Hi Cheapy!)20:53 Sony's video controversy and DRM27:13 The Weekly Burnout Update29:25 The EA Download Manager33:15 Digital Distributiionxdnugfnjdnrog - Peggle XBLA35:26 Interview with Dorian Kieken, Associate Producer for Sonic Chronicles50:10 End of interview, discussion about Sonic's story52:50 We're both awful at maths54:00 Bargains of the weekDe Blob, DarkSector56:17 Microsoft Points deal no more...57:50 What we've been playing - Rock Band, Multiwinia, Mass Effect, and more!1:11:15 Close

Contest:To win a copy of the Penny Arcade game, grab a Penny Arcade comic and remix it. Replace the word balloons, mix and match panels from different comics; whatever you like. Send the result as an attachment to willeth -at- gmail -dot- com with the subject PRECIPICE CONTEST. You won't be judged on the image quality, so feel free to use Paint if you want, but make it good. The final date for entry to this contest is Thursday October 2nd at noon GMT.

To win entry into the LittleBigPlanet beta, fire an email to willeth -at- gmail -dot- com with your SackBoy design and the subject LBP CONTEST. You can find Media Molecule's template here or you can create your own. Entry for this contest closes on Thursday October 2nd at noon GMT.

Nintendo of Europe have just launched a partnership with EMI Backstage to exchange Nintendo Stars for music downloads.

If, like me and anyone else who had a Gamecube, you have got stacks of Nintendo Stars for use in the stars catalogue, but are sick of it never haveing anything worthwhile in stock, there may finally something decent to use it on.

Nintendo will be letting you exchange your Stars for downloads from EMI Backstage, EMI's music download service. The pricing will be 350 Stars for a track, or 3,000 stars for an album.

Which on the basis of 4,000 stars = 1,000 Wii points, and 1,000 Wii points = £7.00, means it's £5.25 an Album, or 62p a track. Not bad pricing at all.

I've never used EMI Backstage, has anyone else? What's it like as a service.

Let's hope they don't manage to "Sell out" of digital goods, like they somehow manage to do with the Wii Points...

EliteUp until recently, I would have said the 120gb drive on the Elite was pretty pointless, I couldn't imagine filling a 20gb drive. But with the coming dashboard update which will let you rip games to the hard drive, the space will definitely go to use.

Sorry if you came here looking for bargains, but I thought I'd just post this very quickly.

I noticed today that the Zune Marketplace (and the Social and Forums) are going down for maintenance tomorrow starting 12:01, the same time that Xbox LIVE and all of those services are being brought down for maintenance. Of course, I don't really know how these services work - maybe they're intrinsically linked - but as far as I'm aware, these services have never gone down at the same time before.

Now, Zune software 3.0 was just released. Maybe it's down for that and maybe it's just a crazy coincidence. But given that this will bring Texas Hold-em and Hexic to the player, there's a lot of cross-talk between the two systems. J Allard runs the thing, even, and Larry Hryb compared the Zune Marketplace and LIVE Marketplace to each other in his most recent podcast.

It makes so much business sense for Microsoft to have the Zune Marketplace available on the 360. The overhead is so small that even if a tiny percentage of LIVE users buy a song, they'll be profiting from it. They already have all that infrastructure in place - the only thing standing in the way is linking the two and designing an interface for it. And there's a new interface coming in a month or so.

I have to consider that they want to link everything at some point. Your Zune tag is the same as your Gamertag, Microsoft Points are interchangeable between the two, and there's precendent with how the Windows Live ID is interwoven into everything. Last year was Windows Messenger integration - is this year Zune's turn?

Last time I fought these aliens it marked something of a downturn in the game. This time, there's a group of nano-suited Koreans on the ridge to the right and a plethora of aliens snaking through icy channels cut out of the surroundings. Cloak mode is on and I'm letting the North Koreans deal with the threat. It's tempting to grab the high ground lay down fire, but I'd be sandwiched between two sides. A brief moment hauled up to recharge and take stock is where it all goes a bit wrong. The first alien is taken down by a Gauss Rifle shot but two more have taken up predatory stances and are about to pounce, speed mode kicks in and leaves them behind. Underneath the Korean squad now, the new machine pistols are perfect for this. Leaping up behind, strength mode kills the recoil as I rip them apart, grinning. Nomad is gone, and in comes the Psycho.

Warhead really doesn't want to let up on this action, the rules have changed. Ammo caches lie everywhere, soldiers fall in one or two hits, and things explode in a shower of physics propelled debris. Everything from mortar fire pounding the land to the screaming jet fighters overhead dropping their payload leaves camera shaking and flecked with dirt. There's a comic hint that it's perhaps gone a bit to far in that every ambush that seemed to require at least one explosive barrel to be used as cover. It's a minor gripe, but keeps the action flowing. The stealthy isolation has now become a constant barrage of events, radio chatter keys you in on your objectives, air support provides covering fire and AI squad mates beckon you on. Here, you're a part of something bigger rather than just being that lonely soldier.

Every section comes and goes in short bursts, if you're not to keen on one part, then the mix-up with the next section will be sure to put you back in the game. It touches upon many gameplay staples; hold this area until support arrives, fight aboard this train, escort this vehicle. Yet it often comes up with it's own slight twist, the train will continue without you aboard. Take a step off, come at the ambush from a different angle, then cut the corner and hop back on. Fire fights are now often as much about who you avoid as who you take on, the aliens present more as a third faction tangling with enemy soldiers. Prioritise threats, engage or move on as you pursue your objective.

And of course it goes without saying that the game is beautiful, although will still probably make you wish you'd spent a bit more on your graphics card. The audio stands out a bit more this time around, the score mixing in with the echoes of water falling down the corridors in the quieter moments, or the guttural thumps as something else goes up in flames . It's still not as convincing as it needs to be to match up with the visuals but it's moving in the right direction. As is the story, Psycho may play out as a caricature, but a likeable one and the banter keeps the narrative moving along. The game isn't long maybe 5 hours, and even on the hardest difficulties won't offer anything too challenging, but for those wanting more Warhead includes the multiplayer experience from original with a few enhancements. The simplicity of the new team death match as well as the rebalancing helps to bring the suit back as the focus of the online play. Rather than just shoot or be shot, the multitude of choices always lets you try something different, do you close in with speed or take to high vantage points with strength? And once there do you cloak to remain hidden, or let armour soak up the enemy fire. It's these choices that make every encounter different and a well timed suit combinations always leaves a smile on your face.

It'd be hard not to recommend Warhead, for those that loved the original it's a chance to revisit the story and setting from a different angle. Those that struggled may just find that Psycho is the right embodiment for their style of game, and both should take a new look at the online offerings.

Severely pushing the meaning of 'Every Friday', it's the SavyGamer Podcast! This week we announce a load of contest winners and interview some instrumental folks at Introversion about developing Multiwinia and their stance on digital distribution and DRM.

Show notes (Highlight to view):00:00 Opening00:36 WELCOME!01:22 Contest talk - you still have time to enter07:00 GRcade affiliation09:55 Professionalism!11:43 Multiwinia is out 'today' (Bear in mind this show was supposed to come out on Friday :S)13:41 Interview with Chris Delay, Creative Director at Introversion28:50 End of interview29:54 The weekly Burnout chat37:13 Mirror's Edge release date and demo details39:12 Life with PlayStation39:55 Home video sharing no longer happening42:04 Fable money exploit44:25 We're making segue now46:42 Portal Prelude - why isn't there a Portal level editor?49:13 Sonic 2 HD tech demo52:15 The Sonic Cycle. Apparently?53:11 The problem with Sonic57:15 Where the hell did Pokémon Platinum come from?1:03:12 Lewie's passionate about business1:03:51 Interview with Thomas Arundel, Commercial Director for Introversion1:18:10 End of interview1:19:20 What we've been playing1:20:00 Rock Band surprise just around the corner1:22:01 More Multiwinia!1:24:55 Pure demo - four letter games!1:28:41 Bargain of the week!STALKER, Dragon Quest: CotC, Beyond Good and Evil, Rockstar Table Tennis1:41:09 360 price drop1:48:30 Close

Contest:To win a copy of the Penny Arcade game, grab a Penny Arcade comic and remix it. Replace the word balloons, mix and match panels from different comics; whatever you like. Send the result as an attachment to willeth -at- gmail -dot- com with the subject PRECIPICE CONTEST. You won't be judged on the image quality, so feel free to use Paint if you want, but make it good.

The price drop is now in effect, but this is (so far) the best place to get a premium from, since it comes with either Halo 3 or Viva Piñata for free. Just hit the "special offers" tab, and pick which ever one you want. You could also get it delivered for an extra £5.95.

You might have noticed a new link up there on the top right, here's what's going on:

Long version:On Thursday the 14th of August, GamesRadar, the general games site for Future Publications, announced that they would be shutting down the GamesRadar UK forums, and politely requested that every sod off to the USA GamesRadar forums.

The community of the GamesRadar forum rejected that, and from the ashes of GamesRadar has risen a new independent forum. GRcade.

This new forum is not directly connected to any main site, it is just a forum for people who love "Games + Stuff". There is no corporate backing, and the only reason it exists is because the old GamesRadar community wanted to stick together.

Now, to ensure that there was a constant flow of new members to keep the community alive, it was decided that they would tie to other sites with links to the GamesRadar community, and so arose the idea for "Official Partner sites", one of which is SavyGamer (the other two are D+PAD and Press Start Online). The idea is that I link to them, and they link back to me, hence the banner for SavyGamer on GRcade.

However, I want to take that idea even further.

I'd love for you guys to register at GRcade, and I will be exploring loads of different ways for the community here and there to interact with each other. I'll be linking to threads in GRcade when it's relevant, and if there's any interest, I'll be offering opportunity for GRcade forumers to contribute to SavyGamer in a range of ways. If you do register, maybe put something in your sig mentioning that you've come from SavyGamer so that people know where you've come from.

Spore is life, the universe and everything, packaged up in a charming, albeit sometimes infuriating, user friendly click-a-thon. It is one of the most important PC games released in a long time, and it wouldn't surprise me if in 10 years time we are feeling it's impact. That said, it is far from perfect.

The tech Will Wright and his team have put together is pretty astounding. The game design geek in my head is excited at the prospects of what is in store for this kind of procedural user generated content stuff, and the creature creator is both robust and simple.

The community integration is superb, and should be the model for how to nurture a creative community around a game. Maxis have made it incredibly easy to share, and enjoy creations of your friends directly in the game. The Sporepedia, a database of all the Spore creations, if just fantastic, and the Sporecasts, targeted discrete packets of content, are a brilliant way of sifting through the huge body of content to find what you want.

The scale and scope are fantastic. You really do start off on a cellular level, and it scopes all the way up to intergalactic colonisation. You genuinely feel like the other species you encounter are living and breathing in their environment. The level and creature design feels natural because it is natural. There is something I can't quite put my finger on about Spore where it has nailed the feeling of exploration.

Each stage has it's own shortcomings though, in particular, the space stage is a bit disappointing. Somehow it manages to reduce adventuring over huge galaxies filled with unique and excited species and civilisations to playing intergalactic janitor, having to keep a watchful eye on your home planet is no fun when you want to be off adventuring. There is still a lot of fun to be had, but I wish some of the micromanagement wasn't so fiddly.

This is a really easy criticism to make, but that doesn't make it any less valid - No doubt EA have been looking at the astronomical sales of the entirety of The Sims franchise, and want to target a similar market segment with Spore. There have been a bunch of design concessions made to make Spore more accessible. For the most part these are harmless, but every now and again something pops up that just irks me.

There are also obvious gaps which future expansion packs are going to fill. The flora editor has been held back for an expansion pack, and I can see scope for expansion upon combat, the creature stage, and definitely the whole 'ecosystem' aspect of the Space stage.

I couldn't review Spore without mentioning the DRM. Quite simply, I would not have bought Spore with the current DRM it has. The SecuROM DRM requires you to connect to the internet to install the game, and you will only ever be allowed to install it 3 times without having to contact EA, where on a case-by-case basis they will decide if you are allowed to install it again. This is in my opinion unacceptable, I have reinstalled Halflife, Deus Ex, Alpha Centauri, upwards of twenty times, and it's not unreasonable to want to install, uninstall and reinstall a game as many times as you want if you have paid for it.

Whilst I am at it. Please EA, continue to put your games on Steam. All your games, not just Crysis. I got it from the EA Store, where it costs £40, £13 more than a physical copy. You also only have access to the download for 6 months, after then, unless you have backed up the installer (or paid the £3 for "Extended Download Service" to let you download it for up to 2 years), you are out of luck.

It is, however, not just a retailer specific promotion, but an official Microsoft pricedrop, coming into effect on the 19th of September.

The new official prices for the Xbox 360 are as follows -£129.99 for the Arcade£169.99 for the Premium (60gb)£229.99 for the Elite

Neil Thompson, senior regional director of Microsoft UK had this to say -

"Xbox 360 has now sold over 20 million consoles worldwide and due to its unprecedented success, we are now able to pass on the rewards of that success to the consumer with a new retail pricing from £129.99.

With more games, more entertainment with Xbox Live and now even more value, we are looking forward to welcoming more customers into the leading next generation console, Xbox 360."

I'll be keeping an eye out for clearance prices on old 20gb stock, if anyone has any stock left that is.

As it is though, that's a cracking price drop, to be honest I thought the 360 was already pretty reasonably priced, but the 19th is going to be the perfect time to pick up a 360.

I first booted up Bakushow, and found to great surprise that there is no single player mode. That's fine though, I'm not going to discriminate against a game for being multiplayer only. I will say this though, the packaging should certainly be more explicit in telling you that if you only have access to one DS it is basically just a title screen.

Not that there is much else here even if you do have multiple players.

There is absolutely nothing to Bakushow that could not be done, in many ways better, with Pictochat, or hell, even a pencil and paper. There is essentially no game here whatsoever.

The game, if you can call it that, is that players take turns to write or draw something on the DS, then all players must answer the 'challenge' within a set time period. Then players vote for who answered it best.

Then you do it again.

And again.

That's it. There are no built in challenges, there are no minigames, there is nothing.

If you are playing with just two people, then the voting system is broken, because each player just votes for themselves continually. Resulting in player 1 winning by virtue of being player 1.

I kept searching for an extra mode or something, and found nothing. I genuinely thought I had somehow missed the actual game, but alas, I had just played it all already and not realised.

I am utterly shocked that anyone had the disrespect for their players to put this on a cartridge and charge Twenty Five Pounds for it.

The only thing Bakushow succeeds in is making you wish Nintendo had of put a few more features in Pictochat.

According to the guys who made it - "If you think this game is boring, you are boring." That is not how things work. They do not have the right to say this. I think Bakushow is boring because it is a bad game, no other reason. Since when have developers been able to put out disclaimers regarding your opinion?

Do not buy Bakushow, please. In fact, if you see anyone in GAME (since that's the only retailer that will dare to sell it) pick it up off the shelf, I implore you to tell them not to buy it. Bakushow is contentless shovelware, there is no game there whatsoever.

In this episode we discuss why we've skipped a fortnight, and I get very excited and interrupt Lewie a lot. VGChartz are mainly responsible.

Show notes (Highlight to view):00:00 Opening00:36 Welcome00:45 The Lost Episode03:12 Contests! [Link]05:00 I talk about a shame tarp, here. That's a weird reference. [Link]07:19 Are Harmonix a little insensitive?08:31 New Rock Band song - Stephen Colbert[Note: This song is now available on PSN but was not at the time of recording]11:32 Left 4 Dead demo announced by Gabe Newell - but when?14:45 Is the New Xbox Experience going to be relaunching the console?15:45 No. No it isn't. We spend a bit too much time debating why it isn't.21:32 But when is it coming out?22:32 Resistance 2 beta [Link]25:31 Anti-Spore. After recording, it turns out that this was a massive Rick Roll. [Link]26:23 Fracture demo coming soon28:50 So there was a Half-Life Episode 4? [Link]34:18 Tons of bargains this week!Bargains of the week:Assassin's Creed, 360 - £7.99The Darkness, 360 - £4.99Sonic Chronicles: The Dark Brotherhood, DS - £17.9341:50 Playing Rock Band with my family43:34 Lewie's mummy on Defence Grid: The Awakening45:32 Pirates vs. Ninjas Dodgeball47:25 Castle Crashers, poo, and a little clan discussion50:39 We should have had more 2D games51:49 BAKUSHOW - the game that would be very boring to play with us55:53 Contest details58:55 Something happened here with the audio, not sure what. I should say "We'd done the barrel rolls, but we needed to wait for him to do one degree of flatspin, but he thought we still had to do barrel rolls."59:46 Rainslick contest1:01:05 Close1:01:15 Minute of Silence

The Variety Map Pack for Call of Duty 4 is half price until Monday at 8am GMT. These are the maps that are included in the Game of the Year (goatee) edition.

It's been knocked down from 800 points (~£5.32) to 400 points (~£2.66).

All Sterling values in this post are compared to Tesco.com points pricing. If you get your points elsewhere then the equivalent cost will be higher. No word yet on whether this discount is also available on PSN.

Here's a photo, supposedly from a Woolies employee. This would be in line with their recent price drops, if you remember they dropped the Wii to £159.99.

Now, I can't guarantee this will work, but if you want to try and trick the system and reserve yourself a console, so you can be sure to have one, this might help.

If you order one over the phone (0844 811 7111) they will hold it for you, so you can just turn up and pay and collect it on a set day. They will hold onto items for some time (if I remember correctly, a week), so if you order one now, they will give you a date for when you can collect it. Then, you can wait for the price drop, and just turn up and ask for it at the lower price when the price drop does happen. If the price drop doesn't happen any time soon (since I can't say when this will happen), no matter, you can just cancel the order, and not have to pay a penny.

Thanks to Engadget for the heads up. Stay tuned for SavyGamer for more on this as it becomes available.

If you pre-purchase Multiwinia on steam, you get the fantastic Darwinia for free. Comes to £13.28 by my maths.

If you haven't already got/played Darwinia, I highly recommend it. It's a wonderful, unique, beautiful game. Very indie, but at the same time, very polished, and it has a great sense of humour (be sure to download the PDF of the manual too).

Making your way through the driving rain, the remnants of the abandoned town of Limansk stretches out ahead. Somewhere over the other side is the reactor core, the heart of the zone. Shuttered windows, and nailed up doors leave only the streets which look oh so very open. With the warning of an ambush ahead fresh in mind I find myself pressing up against the few ruined cars that have long since been abandoned. A cursory sweep with binoculars doesn't give anything away, but a moment later lightning baths the fronts of the buildings and in a window, for a brief second, a black silhouette is outlined in cold white light. Raising the scope of the silenced rifle, the figure remains a shadow in a patch of gloom, but it's enough. Raising the sights just a little to factor in the bullet drop, the trigger is pulled and the inevitable happens: "This is XRay Engine crash reporting client. To help the development process, please Submit Bug or save report and email it manually".

And it's gone. All the atmosphere, all the tension is converted into petty annoyance. I should be enjoying this game, but it feels as though someone is having fun with a bizarre metagame. Instead of probing for anomalies, your hunting for crash bugs. Which scripted event will trigger it next? The game's story (very much a rehash of the first game) is quickly replaced by trips to the forums, the discovery of an [Unofficial Fix] thread a greater prize than any artefact. Minor bugs abound, the Directx10 graphics corrupt in the rain, the AI occasionally decides not to initialise on loading, the quick save feature doesn't work etc. But these are simply part and parcel of a game, the slight quirks are almost more annoying. It's not that the AI can throw grenades further than Olympians could dream, it's not that they do this with pinpoint accuracy, without being able to see . It's that they do all this without any possible knowledge of where you are.

Getting away from all that, Clear Sky manages to deliver on so much of what was promised with the original Stalker, it's a living breathing world. The fire fights remain amongst the best that any game offers, brutal and unrelenting. Standing out in the open is a sure fire way of needing to hit the reload key, but hunker down in cover and soon you'll be pinned down and surrounded. The faction wars add in friendly squads, and the storyline is often best left forgotten as you join in their patrols. Small skirmishes soon give way to fully fledged battles for territory. Grenades, tracers and screams fill the air, and then as quickly as it starts it dies out again, and the scavenging can begin. The scripted events can be more hit and miss, having played through 8/10ths of the game without limits, it feels odd to be pinned down by a single sniper that can't be killed despite repeated headshots. At other times it's pitch perfect. Making your way through the distorted swirls of radiation pockets and gravity anomalies you swear you can almost see something move ahead. It's not long before the nervous friendly AI notice the same thing and then open fire predator style. By the time you make it to your destination, the rest of the squad lie torn apart, dotted along the route.

As a game it manages to be both beautiful and ugly at the same time. Much like the real 'zone', it's a world you'd hate to visit, but could stare endlessly at pictures of long since forgotten play parks, the abandoned flats and houses slowly being reclaimed by nature, or just the ever changing (and rarely clear) sky. Catch a zone at the wrong time of day then a simple zombie duck hunt turns into another gaming session abandoned until daylight returns both in the real world and in the game world. The voice acting, whilst not brilliant is amiable enough, the minimalist sound track adding just enough to keep things going with the real stars being the guttural sounds, the footsteps, the creaking, or the moans that leave you feeling not quite as alone as you'd like to be.

In the end, I have the feeling that Clear Sky will depend more on the player than anything else. It's a game that won't tell you when you've made a mistake, but just leave you with that sinking feeling halfway through a zone when you realise you really should have bought the more expensive suit of armour, or that might be another, less dangerous way around. It often offers just enough of a hint of what you should be doing, but similarly leaves enough doubt that the less intrepid might miss the cues. Yes, artefacts are hard and dangerous to find, but you're a stalker, it's worth the risk. Yes, bad things happen in the zone, but you're a stalker, you're prepared for them. Yes, scraping together a living in the zone is tough, but you're a stalker, it's what you do.

In the end saying that Stalker epitomises everything in PC gaming is as much of a low blow as it is a compliment. As a game though, it very much takes the highs with the lows. On the one hand it offers something so unique and so hardcore that it'll never appear in this form on a console. On the other, you are paying to beta test a game that may never be finished. GSC Game World could have won a lot of praise by following the path of CD-Project and re-releasing the original game patched up to how they intended. In the end they cashed out with another unfinished product.

These were originally announced in the podcast for last week, but as it snarled itself up and I can't get it together in a timely fashion I'm going to post these here instead.

We have two competitions going this week. One of them is to win a bunch of stuff from Lewie's PAX swag bag! To win, simply fire off an email to him (lewiep -at- savygamer -dot- co -dot- uk) with the subject SWAG CONTEST justifying why you deserve it. Be creative and make us laugh! We'll judge these over the next week or so and announce the winner on Episode 5 of the podcast, available a week on Friday.

The second is for a SOCOM: Confrontation Beta code. The beta lasts until the 5th of October and if you haven't got in on it yet then this could be a rare chance for you. This one also requires a little bit of effort - SOCOM is being bundled with the official PS3 Bluetooth headset. I want you to describe something that happened to you in an online game, either positive or negative, revolving around the use of (or lack of) a headset. Bonus points are given for creativity. Send your entry to my email address (willeth -at- gmail -dot- com) with the subject SOCOM BETA CONTEST. As the beta only lasts until the 5th, I'll decide this one very soon, so get your entries in before Sunday at noon GMT. I'll email the winner their code by Sunday evening and they'll also get a shout-out on the show.

On Friday's episode of the podcast, Episode 4, we'll be giving away a Collector's Edition of the Penny Arcade game - On The Rain-Slick Precipice of Darkness, Episode 1. As well as the game (which runs on PC, Mac, and Linux) and a printed manual with the prequel comic within, it contains a keyring, a custom Startling Developments D20, and a Precipice T-shirt. Make sure you listen to Episode 4 on Friday to find out how to enter.

Sorry to anyone who was looking forward to our PAX impressions, but hopefully this week's show will make up for it. See you on Friday!

I didn't intentionally mislead you guys. We did record a podcast this week...

..Except technical issues made it completely unlistenable, basically the two sides of the conversation don't match up at all.

So we aren't going to put it up, but we'll record a new one this Friday.

In the meantime, you can listen to the new series of One Life Left, which has just gone live.

If you've not listened to it before, it's really great. The OLL crew definitely don't take themselves to seriously, and it is a lot of fun to listen to. Highly recomended.

If you are a long time fan, or like what you hear just based on episode one of this series, I suggest you vote for them in the GMAs, the game media awards. Just send an email to gma@intentmedia.co.uk explaining that you wish to vote for One Life left in the category of “best broadcast”.

It's technically an industry insider only award, so if you can blag that you are somehow involved in the games industry/media that would help (just say your from a blog if you have one.)

So yeah, thanks for your patience, next 'cast will be up on Friday, technology willing.

I've been a big fan of their games over the years, so it cuts me deep to see Microsoft close Ensemble Studios. They were behind the fantastic Age of Empires and Age of Mythology games, and are currently working on the Xbox 360 exclusive Halo RTS "Halo Wars".

Confirming a story broken by Shacknews, Microsoft now says that it will shut down Halo Wars developer Ensemble Studios following the end of work on the company's upcoming RTS.

Microsoft issued a full statement on the news, which follows:"Microsoft has decided to close Ensemble Studios following the completion of Halo Wars. After the closure, the Ensemble leadership team will form a new studio and has agreed to provide ongoing support for Halo Wars as well as work on other projects with Microsoft Game Studios.

The team at Ensemble has made invaluable contributions to the games industry with their Age of Empires and Age of Mythology games and with the highly anticipated release of Halo Wars. This decision does not reflect at all on Ensembles talent or the quality of Halo Wars. in fact, many people who have had a chance to test drive Halo Wars agree that it is on track to being a fantastic game.

This was a fiscally-rooted decision that keeps MGS on its growth path. While the decision to dissolve Ensemble was not an easy one, Microsoft is working to place as many Ensemble employees who do not move to the newly formed studio into open positions within Microsoft as possible.

As to our overall strategy at MGS, it remains the same. We are committed to growing MGS with world-class talent both internally and with our external partners around the globe. We have recently added some well-known developers to our team and will continue growing the team. Were particularly excited about the titles we have in the pipeline and continue to evaluate additional opportunities to bring incredible games to life with the industries best. Our investment in games has never been greater than it is today."

RIP Ensemble, and good luck to everyone who is going to be loosing their jobs in finding new, and enriching jobs elsewhere.

I don't know why this hasn't been posted yet - certain Xbox Live content is discounted until the end of October. These are as follows (all prices in MSP. GBP values are when compared to the Tesco.com deal):

Beautiful KatamariAccessory Set A - Was 200, now 120 (~£0.80)Accessory Set B - Was 200, now 120 (~£0.80)Accessory Set C - Was 200, now 120 (~£0.80)Accessory Set D - Was 200, now 120 (~£0.80)Special Accessory - Was 250, now 120 (~£0.80)Just-size Stage - Was 300, now 210 (~£1.40)Big-10 Stage - Was 200, now 140 (~£0.93)Big-11 Stage - Was 200, now 140 (~£0.93)

Origin of SavyGamer

The idea behind SavyGamer is simple: Everyone has a budget and the best way to push that budget is to shop smart.

There are tonnes of pricebots about (froogle, kelkoo, you know them all) and I'm not about to substitute them, they do a fine job. I post what I think are quality deals, good games/gaming related equipment that is a good deal at the asking price.

Where applicable, I will post referral links. These links will lead to me getting commission from the retailers, often varying between 1 and 10%. There is no change in price for you, but if you prefer not to use referral links then you only need to browse the homepage of the retailer and search for the item.

If you ever want to submit a deal, or request a good deal on a specific game, email me at LewieP@savygamer.co.uk, and I will do my best to help you out.